for the part of Private Pike. Lavender – a 22-year-old, Birmingham-born actor whose fledgling career up to this point consisted simply of two years in drama school at Bristol’s Old Vic followed by a six-month season playing juvenile leads at Canterbury’s Marlowe Theatre – had recently become one of Callender’s clients, and early in 1968, just before he was due to make his television debut on 5 March in a one-off ITV/Rediffusion drama called Flowers At My Feet, she urged her husband to watch him. ‘So I did,’ recalled Croft, ‘and I was most impressed. He played a young juvenile delightfully.’44 Croft had no qualms, as a BBC producer, about casting one of his wife’s clients, partly because he had great faith in her – as well as his own – judgement, and partly because he already had the BBC’s blessing to go ahead and do so:
I’d had a considerable number of interviews at this time with Tom Sloan, because of the fact that my wife was an agent. I said, ‘Tom, look: we’ve got this corporate situation – my wife’s an agent, she’s got some good clients, but, at the same time, I don’t want to use them if somebody is going to say, “He uses his wife’s talent all the time.”’ So he said, ‘Well, no, you mustn’t not use them, David; you must also forbear to use them when somebody else of superior ability is available. But you must not deny her actors a chance for employment.’ And that was fine; that was settled. He did go on to say, ‘When you do use somebody in your wife’s list, just drop me a note’, which I always did.45
When Callender called Lavender with the news that he was wanted at Television Centre he had no idea that the man to whom she was sending him was her husband:
I was just sent along to see this man Croft. About a situation-comedy called Dad’s Army. It was a bit terrifying, really, because at drama school I’d been playing Romeo and Florizel and all that sort of thing, and the only comedy I’d ever done was Restoration Comedy. I knew about the Home Guard, because my father had been station sergeant at a police station that served the Austin motorworks in Birmingham, and he’d had to go and inspect them and make sure they were doing everything right, so I knew what it was. But the thought of being in a comedy – I did find that daunting. Anyway, I went and read for David. Then I was called back again the following week, and then again at the end of the week after that. And then I heard I’d got the part.46
It was only after he had been hired that Lavender discovered just how well-connected his agent actually was:
Ann Callender said to me, ‘I’m going to take you out to lunch, darling.’ Which she did. And she said, ‘By the way, I forgot to tell you that David Croft is my husband.’ And my face obviously dropped, because then she said, ‘Yes. That’s exactly why we didn’t tell you. But you got the part because he wants you. And I’d just like to point out – don’t forget that he can always write you out!’47
Once Pike had been picked, Croft turned his attention to the supporting players. John Ringham, an experienced, self-styled ‘jobbing character actor’,48 was chosen to play Private Bracewell, the Wodehousian silly ass from the City; Janet Davies, a bright, reliable performer whom Croft had used in a recent episode of Beggar My Neighbour, was hired as Mrs Mavis Pike;49 Caroline Dowdeswell was recruited to play junior clerk Janet King (a hastily drawn character introduced after Michael Mills had declared that the show needed a soupçon of sex);50 Gordon Peters, a former stand-up comic who specialised in playing Hancock-style characters, was drafted in for the one-off role of the fire chief; and several seasoned professionals – including Colin Bean, Richard Jacques, Hugh Hastings, George Hancock, Vic Taylor, Richard Kitteridge, Vernon Drake, Hugh Cecil, Frank Godfrey, Jimmy Mac, David Seaforth and Desmond Cullum-Jones – were engaged (at six guineas each per episode) to make up the platoon’s back row.51 One character now remained to be cast: the nasty, nosy, noisy ARP warden.
Croft thought more or less immediately of Bill Pertwee. Pertwee, in real life, could not have been less like the loud and loutish character Croft and Perry had created to darken Mainwaring’s moods, but he was quite capable of investing such a role with a degree of comic vulnerability that would lift it far above the realm of caricature. Like his cousin, Jon, Bill Pertwee came to television after learning his craft both in Variety – first as a colleague of Beryl Reid, later in partnership with his wife, Marion MacLeod – and radio – as a valued and versatile contributor to both Beyond Our Ken (1958–64) and Round the Horne (1965–7). After catching the eye in a series of The Norman Vaughan Show on BBC1 in 1966, he found himself increasingly in demand not only for comic cameos but also as a warm-up man for various television shows, and he started to think more seriously about pursuing work in the medium ‘to add another string to one’s bow, as it were’.52 In 1968, just as he was preparing for a season of performances at Bognor Regis, he heard from David Croft:
I’d worked for David the previous year. It was just a small part in an episode of Hugh and I with Terry Scott and Hugh Lloyd: I’d only had a couple of lines, but I had to shout at Terry Scott and push him around a wee bit in a cinema queue. That must have stuck in David’s mind, because when he was casting Dad’s Army he rang up the agency I was with [Richard Stone], found out that I was probably available and gave me a call. He said, ‘I’m starting a programme about the Home Guard, and I’ve got these couple of lines for an air-raid warden. You just come into an office and shout a bit and then go out again.’ And that was it – that was how he cast me in that.53
Even though the air-raid warden was not, at that stage, conceived of as a regular character, Croft knew that Pertwee could be relied on not only to turn in the kind of spirited performance he required to test the role’s comic potential, but also to inject some welcome energy and good humour into a company of tough and occasionally testy old professionals. ‘I booked Bill because he was good, of course, but I also booked him in order to keep everyone else happy and sweet. He was always very bubbly, very well liked by everyone, and he’s marvellous fun.’54
The casting, at last, was complete, and Croft regarded the ensemble that he had assembled with a considerable amount of satisfaction: ‘The cast that you started out thinking about is never the same as the one you finish up with, but I was pretty pleased with the line-up we’d managed to get. There was a great deal of quality there.’55 He looked ahead at all the potential clashes of egos, all the possible conflicts of ambition, all the inevitable accidents (happy and otherwise), all the long drawn-out set-ups and last-minute revisions, all the budgetary worries, all the problems with props and people and performances, and he could not wait to get started. He was ready to make a television programme.
There’s nothing funny on paper. All you are playing with is a bagful of potential. Even when the show’s written you haven’t got anything. Comedy is like a torch battery – there is no point in it until the circuit is complete and the bulb, which is the audience, lights up. It is how strongly the bulb lights up which determines how well you have done your job.
FRANK MUIR1
